Georgia Rose
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl, Oneshot. ZA, AU. Possible sequel to "The Roses Still Grow in Georgia." They only hoped to see her grow and bloom into all she was meant to be.


**AN: So two of my lovely ladies from Tumblr wanted another part to "The Roses Still Grow in Georgia." I didn't want to add this to that story because it may not be a piece that everyone who read that story wants. Still, I'll make it available to those who would like it. If you haven't read that story, you might want to read it before you read this one to get the full impact.**

 **I'll give a warning for mentions/discussions of miscarriage and the loss of Carol's girls.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead. If I ever forget to say that, just assume it's true because I just never will. LOL**

 **I hope that you enjoy this! Let me know what you think!**

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The tears streamed down Carol's face and Daryl didn't pretend that he had no idea why she seemed to be fighting so hard against the natural order of things. Her body wanted to deliver their child into the world, but her fear wanted it to stop.

Everything inside of her was screaming that this was the end and, if it wasn't the end, it was the beginning of the end.

In Georgia there were four graves that she'd left behind. Four graves that held the bodies of her children: two born from her body and two that she'd taken as her own. She'd left behind their bodies, but she'd never let go of their memories.

She'd also never let go of the pain that she'd felt at losing them.

She had cried so pathetically the day that she'd confirmed that she was carrying this child that Daryl had cried right along with her because of the tearing sensation that her tears had caused inside his chest. She had feared, from the very beginning, when the end would come.

And Daryl had spent more time praying to God—a God who hadn't heard from him since he'd buried the lifeless body of their last-born child in a hole in the ground in Georgia—than he'd ever spent in the whole of his life. Morning, noon, and night, he'd fallen on his knees to simply ask God—if he'd ever seen fit to grant favors to anyone as unworthy as Daryl—to let them have this. Just to please let them have this. Just this once.

It had become his mantra. It was something he prayed every time he took a break from doing something else. It ran through his mind constantly like a song that had become stuck in there.

He'd feared getting too excited the first time he'd felt the baby kick—and every time he'd felt it after that. He'd feared getting too excited the first time their doctor told them that they were in a good "zone" and that the baby had some really decent odds if it were to come then. He even feared, with Carol crushing his hand, to get too excited as she fought against the overwhelming desire to deliver their child into the world at two days past the due date they'd guessed for the child.

"I can't!" Carol declared.

"You've got to," the doctor insisted. "Carol—if you don't do this, I'm going to have to help you out. And I don't want that. It's too dangerous if it can be avoided. You can absolutely do this."

"Carol—you gotta," Daryl insisted. "You gotta. Come on. Let's get him here, OK? Let's just—get him here. You gonna feel better when he's here."

"I can't," Carol wailed at them. "I don't want to! I don't—want to!"

"I'm going to have to take the baby," the doctor said, getting to her feet and rushing around the room. They'd converted one of the town houses into a "hospital" and, though Carol was comfortable in a bed, she was also only a few feet away from everything the doctor had available to her. "I didn't want to have to do this, but that baby has to be born before there's some unnecessary trauma."

Daryl was terrified of the rudimentary surgeries that they were forced to perform with the less than state-of-the-art equipment. Their doctor was good, and most people survived, but Daryl didn't like to test fate.

Fate, after all, hadn't always turned out wonderfully for him or Carol.

Daryl practically gathered Carol into his arms.

"No!" He barked at the doctor. "No...no...no. Carol—you gotta listen to me. You gotta look at me. You can do this and you will fuckin' do this! You got to! You gotta let him be born and you gotta be the one that births him. I can't do it for you, or believe me—I'da tagged in about two hours ago. Now I know it hurts, but you gotta push past that an' then it don't hurt no more."

Carol panted at him. She couldn't breathe and he didn't know how much of it was from her pain and how much was from the tears she was shedding. He knew her tears weren't for physical pain. She was suffering so much from everything else that she'd probably felt very little of the impact of her physical pain. His heart broke for her. He didn't know what else to do, though, so he simply shushed her as though she were a child herself. Oddly enough, she started to calm a little.

"Gonna be OK," he said. "You're healthy. Baby's been healthy as far as we can tell."

"As far as we can tell," Carol said. "That's not very far and I'm too old for this."

Daryl laughed to himself. She was starting to seem bizarrely calm given the circumstances. Daryl kept his eyes locked on hers.

"So you been tellin' me," Daryl said. "Ever since you got pregnant. But here we are, an' you ain't lookin' too old for it. So let's just—go ahead an' get this over with, OK? Let's get him here. Safe. Because we safe here, Carol. We so safe that—he don't even have to know life outside them walls if you don't want him too. But we gotta get him here first, OK?"

Calm had descended over her. The tranquility was almost eerie at the moment. She held Daryl's eyes and she nodded her head.

"OK," she said.

Daryl smiled at her.

"OK?" He asked. "OK—you gonna stop fightin' against it and push?"

Carol nodded, and then she started crying again. But this time, she very clearly pushed with her tears and cried out at sensation that the pushing brought instead of at her emotional pain.

"Doc—I think we ready to do this!" Daryl yelled quickly. He laughed to himself. "Once she makes up her mind, she don't usually play around, neither."

As the doctor took her place again to deliver their child and Carol laid into pushing with everything she had, Daryl stayed where he was and let her bend his body to her will. While he encouraged her with his words, he used his mind to whisper his same prayer—over and over again—to a God he hoped was listening to him.

Please just them have this.

When the baby's cries filled the room and took over ringing in Daryl's ears where Carol's had been ringing before, he laughed to himself at the sheer disbelief he felt. Carol, clearly exhausted, collapsed into the bed and he gathered her into his arms. He kissed the side of her face.

"You did it," he told her.

"Is he OK?" Carol asked.

"She sure is, Mama," their doctor declared. "She's a beautiful baby girl. Here, why don't you hold her while I get everything to clean the two of you up? Daddy—you want to cut the cord?"

Daryl moved enough to let the doctor make the transfer. Carol grabbed for the baby and he backed out of the way to allow her to pull the squalling infant to her. He followed the doctor's instructions and cut his daughter free from Carol before the woman started her work of drawing all her business there to a close.

And he remembered, as he watched the raptured look on Carol's face, to thank God for listening to his probably less-than-extraordinary prayers. And he prayed, even though he'd already asked so much, that they be able to keep the child because, honestly, he wasn't sure that Carol's heart could mend if it were to be shattered so completely again. And he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he'd never survive without her.

If they lost this child, just as sure as anything, they'd might as well go ahead and bury them all together.

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Carol had once thought her heart would never feel whole again. She'd thought that it would always feel as though there were pieces missing. She thought she might always feel as if it were at least a little bit hollow.

She loved Daryl without end, but there was simply something there—a hollowness—that his love couldn't fill because it couldn't reach the chasm.

And now her heart felt so close to full that it was almost bursting.

Georgia was small—barely coming into the world at what Daryl jokingly called the "heavyweight" of five pounds—despite the fact that she'd been born at full term. She was healthy, though, and strong. She fed constantly and she was already gaining weight. She slept well at night and only woke to feed at nearly exactly two-hour intervals.

She had a dusting of red hair that was the same color as Carol's when she'd been a baby. She had her father's chin and his fingers. She also made expressions, every now and again, that Carol felt were unmistakably reminiscent of Daryl's expressions. Daryl insisted that she had Carol's nose and eyes.

And when Daryl held her, he held her like he was terrified of her. She possessed so much power over him, already, that it amused Carol. But at the same time she understood it.

They had never believed that Georgia would be there. They'd never believed that she would come, healthy, into the world. They'd never believed that she would stay even a night—and already she was nearly a week old.

They had never believed that they would live somewhere safe where they might have anything that looked like a normal life had once looked, but their community was safe. They had electricity, even if the grid wasn't always wholly reliable, and they had more than enough to eat with crops growing throughout the year in the fields and greenhouses.

Nobody had died of anything except natural causes in at least two years.

And Carol was lying in bed with her nearly week old daughter lying in the crook of her arm while her husband finished his shower.

Daryl came out of the bathroom, still drying off, and tossed his towel at the floor. He'd pick it up in the morning, or Carol would. He stepped into a pair of underwear and quickly came over to the bed, sliding under the covers like a child who was excited for something that was about to happen.

"She asleep?" He whispered.

Carol smiled to herself.

"Wide awake, Daddy," Carol said. "And happy—she won't be for long, though. It's time for her to eat."

Daryl leaned over and rubbed his nose against Georgia's cheek. The touch seemed to remind her that she was hungry because she turned her head toward him and started to search him out to see if he had milk to offer her. Carol laughed to herself.

"She's going to eat you if you keep doing that," she teased.

"My sweet girl ain't gonna eat me," he said. He slipped his hands under the baby and carefully scooped her up. He was a pro at picking her up from the bed. He didn't like making the transfer from somebody else's arms to his own, however, and he got nervous when it came time to put her down. He seemed to have an irrational fear that, without any reason at all, he would simply let go of her just before he was ready to carefully release her.

He nuzzled Georgia and the baby started the panting that she did when she was starting to realize that Carol had been tardy with her meal.

She'd been there no more than a week, and Carol felt like she could almost read every emotion the baby had. Her body responded even to the first squeaks of unhappiness that Georgia made over the tardiness of her meal and Carol felt her breasts responding to the baby's call for action.

She didn't take her away from Daryl immediately, though. She let him nuzzle their daughter until her squeaks dissolved into the hiccupping cry that woke both of them nearly every two hours at night.

"Oh God!" Daryl declared immediately. Carol laughed and he laughed in response to Carol's laughter. "I hate that sound—you know I do! Fix it—you done it!"

Carol reached and took the baby.

"What did I do?" She asked. "You were holding her when she started."

"You let her get all the way hungry," Daryl said. "See—that's all the hell she wanted. An' you knew it 'fore she got that way."

Georgia stopped crying immediately when introduced to Carol's breast.

Their teasing over, and nothing left to do but wait while she fed, Daryl moved close to Carol and put his arm around her. He slipped next to her and leaned his head against her so that he could watch the baby feeding.

"She's so damned perfect," he said. "You know that? Prettiest baby in the whole town."

"Everyone would say that we just think that because she's ours," Carol said.

"Yeah, well, everybody'd be wrong," Daryl said.

Carol laughed to herself.

She'd thought her heart would never feel whole again. Now it felt whole and full to bursting. She sucked in a breath and let it out, sinking a little deeper into her pillow. Daryl touched Georgia's hand with his finger and the baby scratched at Carol's breast as she pushed at her flesh—making all the necessary movements to get the milk she wanted at just the angle that she wanted to take it in.

"Every time I close my eyes," Carol said, "I'm still afraid that it's all a dream. I'm afraid that—I'll wake up and she won't be there. Or..."

"Shhhh..." Daryl offered quickly. "She don't like it. Sadness causes indigestion an' then she don't enjoy her milk so much."

Carol laughed to herself.

"You made that up," Carol said.

"So what if I did?" Daryl asked. "It's a solid idea. Besides—she's healthy. Carol—this place is a good place and I'ma work every day of my life to make sure it stays that way. We both are. She's here—an' she's gonna be here." He smiled at her. "I got faith."

"You do?" Carol asked, mirroring his smile.

"Prayed about it," he said. "Still do. And—I'm not sayin' that we got us a lucky break or nothing, but she got here healthy. She's still healthy. And I'm still prayin'."

"I still think about them," Carol said. "Especially—now. When I'm holding her."

"I know you do," Daryl said. "Because I do. Every day."

"I don't want to forget them, Daryl," Carol said.

"We won't," Daryl said. "Never. Couldn't. We'll tell her about 'em when she's older. How—how she's lucky, ya know? Only kid that's got her four sisters up there that's lookin' out for her." He stopped and visibly swallowed. Carol mirrored the action. It took him a moment to continue, but she gave him the time. They had time. "Maybe—maybe it was them that, ya know, picked her out. Maybe it was them that put in a good word for us. Seconded my askin' if we could just have her. Maybe—they convinced God or somethin' that we was fit to have her an' the time was right."

Carol smiled to herself and swallowed rapidly against the growing lump in her throat.

"Yeah," she offered softly, her voice barely able to escape at all. "I'm sure that's—how it happened."

Daryl leaned and kissed the side of her face. She turned her head and caught his lips. A small sob that she couldn't entirely swallow down escaped her, but he took it from her and didn't scold her for it. Instead, he simply kissed her again and then he rubbed a finger gently over Georgia's cheek.

"When she's bigger," Daryl said. "We'll tell her about why she was named Georgia Rose. An' we'll tell her about her sisters—and how they picked her out special for the two of us 'cause they knew—they knew she needed us, and we sure needed her."

Carol smiled to herself and closed her eyes to the sensation of her daughter leisurely nursing in the manner which she seemed to like the best.

She didn't know if there was any truth to Daryl's assumptions about Georgia's heavenly beginnings, but she certainly liked thinking there was.

It made her feel, in a moment where everything already felt so much better and so much more right than it had in years, a little bit closer to the girls that she'd lost. In some way, after all, Georgia held the hopes and dreams of all of them—and though her fear sometimes made her doubt, somewhere deep in her heart, Carol knew that they would get the chance to see her grown and bloom into everything she was meant to be.

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 **AN: Also, I might have time for one more little thing today if anyone has any requests!**

 **Let me know what you think of the story and let me know if you want anything else!**


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